


But I'm A Rockstar!

by th_esaurus



Category: High School Musical RPF, Jonas Brothers
Genre: Ex-Gay Therapy, M/M, but i'm a cheerleader AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zac leans right across the circle to pat Kevin soothingly on the knee. His butt actually comes out of his seat, he's leaning so far across. Kevin likes that he cares. He almost wishes he were gay, just so Zac could have the satisfaction of setting his misguided soul on the right path. But he isn't. So Zac can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I'm A Rockstar!

The first thing they do is go through Kevin's suitcase, disdainfully picking out all his favourite scarves and pants and dropping them in a pile on the floor. He can see the creases forming in his carefully-pressed silk shirts, and actually flinches when his Roberto Botticelli ankle boots are dumped unceremoniously on top of the sorry-looking pile. He'd saved up for those. He'd actually put money aside in a little china piggy bank specifically for those shoes, before they got rich enough that Kevin didn't need to save for things anymore. They take Kevin's clothes away from him. Then they give him a pair of grey slacks and a sky blue polo shirt, and give him a minute to get changed. The slacks don't fit him properly around the crotch. 

Kevin takes a quick look in the dorm's drawers. There's just stacks of grey and blue, and huge, horrible pairs of old-man underwear. 

"The uniform is meant to help you think of True Directions as more of a school than a—a reformation center," his mother tells him gently, putting a hand on Kevin's shoulder and smiling sadly. "A place of learning."

"But I already did school," Kevin tells her. "I got good grades and I did sports and now I'm a rockstar."

"Of course you are, honey," his mother sighs. His family have been told specifically not to hug him farewell, but Joe does anyway. He hugs Kevin tightly, and then they get in the car, disappearing behind its tinted windows, and then they drive down the dirt track, turn a corner, and suddenly, are gone.

*

 

Zac is a junior counselor, which doesn't mean much apart from that he's very young; months apart from Kevin, rather than years. He's in charge of the boys' dorm, and he tells them all to think of him as a friend as well as a mentor. All the counselors say that, but Zac seems like he actually means it. His eyes are extremely blue and his hair is extremely well coifed, and he jokes that if anyone needs to use his flat iron, they're more than welcome. 

All the boys are made to sit in a circle while Zac introduces himself. "I was right where you are, this time last year," he says. He's looking at Kevin when he says it. Kevin knows it's only because he happened to be in Zac's line of sight, but all the same, he feels pinned by Zac's dappled eyes, by the intensity of his eyelashes. "True Directions was the best thing that ever happened to me. I liked it so much, I came back to pass on the wisdom." He laughs as though he's contractually obliged to laugh, and then shows them all a Polaroid of him and his girlfriend Vanessa in New York at Christmas.

They go around the circle admitting their homosexuality. Kevin starts to sweat in his slightly-too-small loafers, wiping his palms on the crease of his pants. Kevin's pretty awesome at public speaking, but less awesome at lying. The boy on his left, David, takes his turn. "My name's David Henrie," he says. "And I like fucking boys in the ass."

Someone giggles. Kevin flushes deeply, and moves away from where his shoulder is almost brushing against David's. Zac tells David it's good that he can acknowledge that, and he looks like he's trying not to smirk. His lips are very pretty. If Kevin stares at Zac hard enough, he figures maybe Zac will be able to read his mind, to realise that actually, Kevin isn't gay at all and he doesn't have the faintest idea why he's here, and send him back out on the road with a guitar and his brothers. But Zac just looks back at him expectantly, smiling. 

Kevin wipes his palms furiously. "I'm Kevin Jonas," he says at the floor. "And I'm—I'm not gay. I'm a rockstar."

Zac's smile deepens, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. "It's hard, dude. It's hard to say the words sometimes."

Kevin boggles at him. "No it isn't. It's really easy to tell you I'm not gay. I'm not. I'm in a band. We sing songs about girls. To girls. There are lots of girls in my life."

Zac leans right across the circle to pat Kevin soothingly on the knee. His butt actually comes out of his seat, he's leaning so far across. Kevin likes that he cares. He almost wishes he were gay, just so Zac could have the satisfaction of setting his misguided soul on the right path. But he isn't. So Zac can't.

*

 

It's lights out at eleven sharp, but on the first few nights, the boys stay up, talking quietly across their bunks. David starts it, opening the window and leaning out of it to smoke a cigarette. Maybe nobody told him they're contraband. "You aren't supposed to do that," Kevin says, craning up his neck to watch the spark of David's lighter flicker into life, waver, set the tip of his cigarette alight like the sudden birth of a star, then fade out as soon as it's born.

"You aren't supposed to like pussy," David shoots back, "But I guess you didn't get the memo, huh."

Kevin shuffles back under his duvet. Lucas, the boy in the bed next to his, puts out a hand blindly in the darkness, touching Kevin's comforter reassuringly. "Ignore him. It's his third year here. He hasn't been cured yet."

"That's because dick is awesome," David says distantly, but they both ignore him.

Lucas, it turns out, is also a failure. He's back for a second try, he tells Kevin, and he says it with such a sad smile that Kevin wants to crawl into his bed and hold him. Instead, he just nods. Lucas asks him if he really doesn't think he's gay, and Kevin nods again. Lucas can't see him, but can hear the shuffle of his hair against his pillow. "What's it like?" he asks earnestly. "Being straight?"

"I never really thought about it," Kevin says quietly, suddenly aware that the whole room is listening to them.

"What about kissing girls?" Someone on the other side pipes up. "What's that like?"

"I haven't got round to it yet," Kevin says, even more quietly. He's too busy being a rockstar to kiss girls. It's not like none of them ever wanted to hold his hand and let him open doors and buy dinners for them, but Kevin always politely declined, smiling and apologetic. He couldn't date when he had songs about dating to write. 

*

 

Zac takes them on an overnight camping trip into the forest and teaches them how to be at one with their inner primal man, or something. They all have to wear massive, squeaky rain boots that are the colour of boogers and don't match their sleeping bags at all. They have to do Neanderthal things like chopping wood with an axe and building a fire out of sticks and eating loads of meat. Kevin doesn't feel any straighter for it, but he sure could use an apple. 

As the sun starts to dip down and shatter behind the dense forest, Zac whips out a guitar and hands it to Kevin. "I heard you were a rockstar," he says wryly. Kevin could cry as he feels the familiar shape of the acoustic settle into his hands, his fingers moulding around the neck and plucking at the strings out of habit, before he even has the strap over his head. 

He plays Kumbaya while they sit around the campfire, and it's the happiest Kevin has been in days. Zac is at his side, tapping out the rhythm on his knee. Nobody sings. Kevin tries, but his voice isn't very strong and out of practice besides. And then, close to his ear, Zac picks up the thread of the rhythm, his voice clear and unhindered in the cool night air. He sings beautifully. Kevin stops trying altogether, just so he can listen to Zac better. 

They do a few more songs Kevin learnt in church, but then David manhandles the guitar off of Kevin and runs into the forest with it, belting out a rousing chorus of Baby Got Back. "I’d better go find him," Zac says, his smile lopsided on his face.

"I could keep you company," Kevin offers. Zac pauses for a minute, and then nods. It's strange how happy that single motion, head up, head down, makes Kevin.

The forest is dark by now and they take a pair of torches, but the floor is still uneven, damp and slippery with autumn leaves. Kevin keeps close to Zac because sometimes he's clumsy. He wants to know he can grab Zac's hand if he falls. He tells Zac about the time he tried to do his trademark spin and accidentally ended up with a facefull of amp. Zac peers at his face as though looking for battle scars, but then his expression softens and he's just looking at Kevin, exploring him with his eyes by the faint glow of their torches. 

They find David sitting on a tree stump in a slight clearing, smoking a cigarette. Zac puts on his counselor voice and tells David he's going to have to report this incident to the head office, but David waves him away smokily, says, "You do what you gotta do and I'll keep doing the same." 

They walk back to the camp with David in between them, and Kevin feels a little less happy than he did on the way up.

*

 

Every Friday, they have to sit in that hateful circle and tell each other if they're still gay or not. Every Friday, Kevin stands up and says, "I'm Kevin Jonas, and I'm straight."

Zac always looks disappointed in him. 

Fridays are the worst days.

*

 

They get formally introduced to the girls about three weeks into the course, after they have lessons in how to pull back chairs and stand properly and offer their elbows as a support aide. Kevin has seen girls trying to scalp each other in order to get to the front of the stage; he doesn't think that girls need his elbow to help them walk down the street. But he stands to attention all the same when the girls shuffle into the room. Their uniforms are the same drab sky blue, but the cut of their dresses is sweet and prim, and makes Kevin smile. They all have knee socks. 

Kevin is paired off with a girl called Nicole, who's not nearly as shy as she is small. She's ever so good at their roleplay tasks, pouring Kevin his invisible tea and serving him his invisible steak. Emboldened by her brightness, Kevin goes off script and plants a tiny kiss on her cheek, saying, "Why thank you, little darling," in a stupid cowboy voice. Suddenly, everyone is clapping them. Nicole giggles, and Kevin flushes along the bridge of his nose. He looks around the room for Zac. 

Zac is clapping too, very slowly and very thoughtfully.

*

 

Because Zac is awesome at everything ever invented, he gets to teach the boys how to play soccer. Most of them already know the rules, so it's down to Zac to explain that tackling is an integral part of the game, and getting mud on their shorts is 100% absolutely going to happen. 

Kevin feels strangely self-conscious in his shorts. He wears shorts all the time at home, but here, after almost a month of the same grey slacks, his legs feel thick and hairy and pasty. David is European-blooded and tan, and Kevin wishes he were like that; wishes he were nicer to look at. He doesn't know why this sudden attack of paranoia has come on now, but as he looks over at Zac in his black and white referee get-up, his whistle perched between his slack lips, the feeling grows like a horrible ache in the bottom of his stomach. 

There aren't really enough of them to make it a proper game, but Kevin's team loses anyway, two goals to nil. "It's not about winning," Zac says, his cheeks flushed and his hair all mussed up. "It's the taking part that counts." He slaps his hand on Kevin's back, then runs ahead to coral everyone back to the dorm. 

They aren't allowed a communal shower, so they have to wait, smelly and sweaty, as each boy takes his turn. Kevin is last of all, so he takes his time, getting every last fleck of dirt out of his curls. He rubs at his legs with the bar of soap, as though scrubbing them might make them shapely and less milky. It doesn't. 

Kevin thinks about jerking off in the shower, which is weird, because Kevin never really thinks about jerking off. He doesn't do anything about it, but the fact that it was there, in his mind, as an option, feels somehow significant.

*

 

Kevin doesn't mean to punch David in the face. He does do it on purpose, technically, but it's not like it was a pre-mediated thought. He sits there for a whole three minutes while David talks about how lame this whole programme is and how the counselors are all sad, old queens who get their rocks off bossing around lithe young boys. He sits there while David talks about how the girls are all totally eating each other out. He sits there while David talks about what a fucking hypocrite that smug Efron is.

"Zac's not," Kevin says suddenly. "He's not like that. He's not like you."

David laughs, and it's the polar opposite of Zac's warm, liquid laugh. It's all rough and smoke-tinged and cruel. "Like you can sit there and defend him when you're the one sucking his dick every night."

Kevin doesn't sit through that. He stands up very quickly and draws his elbow back and puts his fist in David's face. And then he runs out of the room and out of the dorm and off the grounds, into the forest. The mud kicks up against the soles of his loafers as he runs, dirtying the bottom of his pants. Kevin doesn't even care.

Zac finds him maybe an hour later. Kevin kind of hoped it would be one of the other counselors so they could kick him out instantly and he could go home. Instead, Zac sits beside him on the damp log Kevin's staked out. He waits a long while before talking. "I'm supposed to discipline you for that," he says, eventually, "seeing as it was totally against the rules. But I'm super impressed. That was the most manly thing anyone's ever done here."

"Thank you," Kevin says miserably.

"Why d'you do it?" Zac asks gently. "David's got a cut lip and a mile-long angry streak now."

"He said things about you."

"Defending my honour, eh? I'm a big boy. I can take it."

"He shouldn't have said those things," Kevin mumbles, and presses his face into Zac's shoulder. It feels safe there. Zac wraps an arm around his back, his fingers resting in the crook of Kevin's waist. The boys aren't supposed to touch each other in what the True Directions manual calls an "overly familiar way", but Zac broke that rule on day one.

Kevin leans his face up towards Zac, but Zac leans in too so Kevin can pretend like he's to blame when they kiss. Zac's hands feel huge on his cheeks, big and warm and encompassing, and his lips are drier than Kevin expected. His mouth parts around Kevin's top lip, kneading at it gently until it feels plump and overripe. Kevin puts his hand on Zac's chest and pushes him back, but only a little way, grabbing onto his collar to stop him going too far. "I'm Kevin Jonas," he says quite breathlessly. "I'm gay."

"I'm glad you can admit that," Zac murmurs, and kisses Kevin again. His watch beeps in the turn of the hour, at midnight. It's a Friday now.

*

 

Zac, because he's a junior counselor, has his own room. He takes Kevin back to it, both of them sneaking up the stairwell like bank robbers. He sits with Kevin in the middle of his single bed, and tells him that he tried really, really hard. The photo of him and his girlfriend is half a year old, he says, and she was only his girlfriend for a few weeks. He didn't want to come back as a failure, and thought if he came back as a success, maybe it would all work out. Maybe heterosexuality would rub off on him eventually. 

"I hope it doesn't," Kevin says earnestly. 

"Me too," Zac replies. He touches the side of Kevin's face, thumbing over his cheekbone. Kevin moves a little closer, and closer still, until he's sitting in Zac's lap. They kiss. Kevin wants to kiss Zac forever. He never thought about things like kissing and jerking off and sex and living together in a big house with kittens and two cars until he met Zac. He tells Zac this, mumbling it against his skin. "I like you too," Zac says, laughing. His laugh tickles Kevin's lips.

*

 

Kevin and Zac both get asked to leave the programme because being naked in bed together is probably detrimental to their heterosexuality. Kevin calls his mother on Zac's cell phone, and she cries a little bit, but Joe takes the phone from her hands and tells Kevin he'll be there to pick them up in two hours, tops.

They wait at the end of the dirt path, with Zac's suitcase and guitar. Kevin strums out a little melody, something Nick had been working on before he left. He wonders if it's finished now. "What will you do?" Kevin asks Zac, between chords. Zac shrugs. "You could come on tour with me," Kevin says.

"What?"

"I'm in a band. With my brothers. I told you, I'm a rockstar."

"I thought you were kidding," Zac says.

"Nope," Kevin replies, plucking out another set of chords. Zac leans over and bumps his shoulder, takes Kevin's chin between his fingers and turns his head to kiss him. 

"I guess we'd better go be rockstars together, then," Zac says, smiling.


End file.
